


Consanguinity

by mem0



Series: Klelijah Translations [6]
Category: The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries & Related Fandoms, The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: AU, Blood, Half-Sibling Incest, Incest, M/M, Mysticism, Romance, Translation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-01 21:56:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20265142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mem0/pseuds/mem0
Summary: Klaus’s weak spot? It’s hard to answer that one wrong.Translation from the Russian (перевод с русского).





	Consanguinity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jaejandra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaejandra/gifts).
  * A translation of [Кровосмешение](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2246244) by [jaejandra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaejandra/pseuds/jaejandra). 

A drugged Elijah is dragged into the cell. Klaus imagines how everything went down and almost wails aloud. He wants to – out of anguish and powerlessness. He has no way to help the being most dear to him in the world.

The door slams. Klaus jerks his arms, bound behind his back, realizing that it’s time to turn to plan B. After all, he’ll always be able to get out, right? A strange rush of strength becomes an unexpected aid, pressing under his ribs.

“Hey, Klaus.” That damn Lockwood enters the room, and seems on the verge of kicking Elijah. True, he has the brains not to do it. “You don’t really think that I’m a complete idiot, right?”

Klaus tears forward, pushing all his animal essence into a jump. He succeeds – despite his bound arms, inconvenient positioning, and the absurd amount of vervain and aconite in his blood. Lockwood laughs, and Klaus barely has time to be surprised. There’s a muffled sound: he flies into an invisible wall and slides down along it in a limp bundle. On the other side, very close by, is Elijah’s long, tousled hair.

Lockwood squats down nearby and touches the barrier with his fingers. It vibrates and rings in the thin air.

“This is the situation.”

Klaus loses it, is drawn into a probably prophetic sleep, and finds himself in a place he shouldn’t be.

* * *

Elijah is too busy with Celia to answer the calls, but the blocked number is too stubborn to ignore. Elijah sighs, pulls himself away from the young vampire, and reluctantly presses “accept.”

_You don’t have to take it, Klaus almost screams in his delirium, ignore it, god damn you, ignore it!_

_But Elijah doesn’t hear him._

“Yes.”

Laughter sounds in the receiver.

“Well, it’s way harder to reach you than Eve Carter.”

“Tyler?” Elijah noticeably tenses, rising from the wide couch.

Celia frowns and buttons her dress, looking up at him.

“The very same.”

“It would be wrong to say that I’m happy to hear from you. To what do I owe this call?”

Tyler Lockwood is now a damn celebrity. He hangs out with the most fashionable it-girls, and his presence turns the best parties of New York and Los Angeles into successes. Half the country is abuzz with news about his career as a professional _celebrity. _

“Tyler?”

“Have you been in Mystic Falls recently?”

“Fairly.”

Elijah nervously looks back over his shoulder – 

_– and looks straight at Klaus, but Klaus isn’t a complete idiot either. He blacked out on the floor of the cell and woke up in foreign memories. It__’__s_ _banal_ _and_ _prosaic__. _

“Your brother has some problems. He ran into something recently. No, not with the Salvatores. It was some young, but strong, witch. So…”

“What’s the point in calling me?” Elijah interrupts coldly. “I won’t ever believe in your good intentions.” 

“Talk to Damon or Stefan, and you’ll see that I’m not involved,” Lockwood responds, somewhat mockingly. “I’m calling you for old time’s sake. If they kill you both, more the better for me.”

He hangs up. Elijah looks at the receiver for a moment – then flies out of the room in a whirlwind, dialing _someone’s _number.

The girl stays on the couch.

* * *

_“Don’t screw around here!” Klaus screams aloud when Elijah enters the Salvatore’s house._

_In vain_ _._

“Elijah!” Caroline, dressed in a puffy skirt and an elegant little jacket, fastened with what seems like a hundred small buttons, throws herself at him on the fly.

And how’s Stefan going to unbutton all those goods at night, Elijah thinks –

_And_ _Klaus_ _groans__. __Now they’re all the way to sharing thoughts, as though the two of them were together, as though they were laughing at the unlucky pair and their wedding rings. What vulgarity, but what can you expect from these two, right, El?_

“You look gorgeous,” Elijah pronounces politely, and she clings to him anyway.

From an excess of emotion – nothing else.

Stefan laughs a little, looking first at the floor, then at his lawfully wedded wife. They haven’t changed at all.

Elena is the opposite. Early in the morning (_or late at night?_) and already wearing a minidress, she looks more like Katherine than herself. She purses her pretty lips and heads straight for the bourbon, without even a greeting. The black line of her dress cuts across her back. Damon, standing in the corner and suddenly looking his one-hundred and forty years for a change, stares passionately at her, but then looks away promptly, waves a hand at Elijah, takes a few steps forward, lifts Caroline into the air and sets her aside:

“No hug, bro?”

The eternal clown.

“I don’t think so,” Elijah politely retorts.

Stefan stands from the couch and shakes his hand. Elena knocks over the whiskey. Damon frowns, and Caroline almost jumps on the spot.

“I came to find out about Klaus.”

_Klaus sits on the edge of the commode and looks at the smooth lines of Elena’s spine. She’s a copy, a doppelganger, so what does it matter who he’s looking at?_

“Bro, we don’t have a clue where he is. But you should’ve come for a visit with the kiddo, we would’ve thrown a party. She’s already like twenty, after all, isn’t she?”

Elijah’s expression changes:

“Damon, you should realize that is not the best idea, and that if you touch her…”

“I’m not suicidal,” the other rolls his eyes. “But…”

“Just shut up,” Elena throws out under her breath, but in the ensuing silence it comes out loud and piercing.

She starts, straightens her hunched shoulders and turns around:

“What? So we fought.”

Stefan turns his gaze away, and Caroline looks on with sympathy.

_Klaus almost snorts with laughter. It’s good that the kid can’t be reached. It__’__s_ _good_ _that_ _she_ _has_ _a_ _relatively normal life. _

Elijah raises his eyebrows.

“It’s evident that I came in vain…”

“Nothing is in vain,” Elena answers, nose turned up, comes a little closer and wipes a speck of dust from his shoulder. “Nothing is in vain.”

“Oh, go on, kiss him!” Damon explodes.

Elena smiles a bit.

“What will I get for your information?”

Elijah looks above her shoulder, again, straight at Klaus. Elena waits. Then apparently gives up, and looks down, giving her little mouth a twist.

“Anyway, I don’t know what’s happening, but Tyler’s thought up some plot. I’d say that it’s some good old revenge against the Mikaelsons. Stop staring at me like that,” – to Stefan and Caroline – “recently he’s been acting like a real dick. I don’t know any details, but I know that he’s been hanging out with New Orleans witches, not New York girls. How do I know?” She raises her eyebrows. “A little birdie told me. Make your own conclusions.”

Elena kisses Elijah on the cheek anyway and Klaus – together with Damon – hisses in rage.

* * *

“Niklaus?” Elijah calls quietly.

And he comes to his senses. A small, triangular blade cools his left palm. Well, that was plan B failing with a crash.

Elijah is sitting on the floor – and holding one hand awkwardly in the air, as though leaning on something. The other reaches endlessly towards Klaus but, of course, can’t reach him. A spell. He’s frowning, watching him with sympathy, and then Klaus remembers. He flies into a rage, feels his veins swelling up on his face, feels the wolf pushing forward, angry that he was beaten, that…

Elijah turning his head to the side is enough for Klaus to calm himself.

“Not looking very good?” He wipes his bloodstained mouth against his shoulder and clenches the blade tighter in his fist.

Elijah looks on a little mockingly and gets on his feet, going to the door. He hits it with his shoulder. Runs up to it and hits it again. Leans down to the lock. Klaus purses his lips and thinks that the most important thing is not to fall apart. For some reason he feels absurdly sorry for Elijah, and also for himself. Elijah returns to the barrier, and Klaus tries to read even the slightest sign in his warm brown eyes.

“You know, Klaus, our own fights backfire on us. If you hadn’t changed your number, if you’d told me what fight you’d gotten into with this witch, if you’d called…”

Klaus laughs hoarsely. It’s time to start talking, or else he’ll probably seem pretty strange.

“I’m serious, brother. They caught me through you.” Elijah shakes his head slightly, _displeased. _

He sits down on the ground and again seems to reach for Klaus, which makes Klaus in turn shudder and lean forward. Klaus really wants his touch, affectionate and careful, to wipe the blood from his split lips, to bring him coolness and oblivion. To deaden the pain.

Elijah isn’t forced back.

Klaus takes in his surroundings with a glance: everything is just like that damned Lockwood promised. There’s one window, at the very top of the cell, an earthy floor, stone walls, and the door is iron and firm, impossible to kick through. A stone box, made with hybrids in mind. And moreover, the two spells. They have no chance.

“Well, let’s just say they caught _me _through _you, _master screw up,” Klaus laughs, hiding his bitterness.

Elijah raises his eyebrows.

“Just imagine, I was looking at…”

* * *

Klaus admires the kid. She’s grown into a beautiful woman, all her mother, and him too. There, look at how guys turn and whistle after her. _Idiots. _Which it seems is her opinion of all of them as well. She’s got brains enough.

The first hybrid by birth, Niklaus Mikaelson’s daughter, is, at her twenty years, an indubitable cause for savage pride. Of course, she doesn’t live with her family, she’s hidden safely, far away in a little house near Yale. She has a car, money, a different last name – everything that’s needed for a peaceful life.

Klaus sighs and thinks that everything has to come to an end, however, however, sometimes a relationship morphs into something different, something even better than before. He doesn’t even think of starting up a conversation with the kid, he’s had enough, they talked their fill the last time, when she, looking up at him with those familiar blue-green eyes, if not at his very soul then certainly at his solar plexus, asserted something about her beloved uncle Elijah and about how inhuman and wildly wrong her rash father was.

There were also some words like _talk to him, get him back, _and something in the spirit of _you can’t live without him. _

Klaus forgives the kid for everything, even uncle Elijah, present in all of their conversations over the course of the last two years, while she hasn’t been living at home, and Klaus hasn’t been speaking with his brother. But to listen to that whole talk every time… Spare him. It’s enough to know that all’s well with her.

He turns around to return to the small, and terribly expensive, hotel where fate led him to stop, but the kid, who had been standing one hundred meters away, at her house’s gate, just two seconds ago, obstructs his path.

“Dad,” she says reproachfully, and Klaus isn’t capable of holding back a happy smile.

He grabs her up into his embrace and strokes the back of her neck.

“Dad,” comes the strangled sound. “You’re choking me.”

Klaus reluctantly releases his embrace, but the kid clings to him herself, five feet and nine inches of model’s looks and puppy love for her father.

“You’re acting like it’s been a while, angel,” he grouses, though not angrily at all.

“Well I missed you anyway,” she declares, and nevertheless withdraws. “Dad, it’s lucky that you look like that, though. No one will think anything bad. But if you were old…”

Klaus leans on the fence, once more feeling his happiness at seeing her boiling up in his blood:

“Yes, yes. A father – now that’s embarrassing. If people see, they’ll laugh at you!” You can filter out the sarcasm, but the kid is used to it. “But here I am, young and handsome. A perfect idea, pass your father off as your lover.”

The kid shakes her head reproachfully:

“_Votre langage _is simply a nightmare. At least you didn’t say _fiancé, _daddy.” Ah, the little troll! “Anyway, it’s called a boyfriend.”

Klaus slaps a palm against his forehead.

“Oh yeah, I forgot that you’re already a thousand, sorry. Lover is probably the right word.”

Klaus growls in frustration, then dissolves in laughter, and the kid joins him.

“Why didn’t you come up to me? You looked and looked and then were planning on going away. Who does that!”

“Probably someone who doesn’t want to be lectured?”

She tucks a chestnut strand of hair behind her ear:

“So you still haven’t made up with my uncle? Dad, you’re an idiot.”

“Where’d you get that from…?” Klaus can no longer find the words to respond, almost suffocating on laughter. “I raised this child and now look at what I get.”

“But Uncle Elijah…”

“I know, he’s the best man on earth.”

“No, the best man on earth is you,” the kid corrects him seriously. “But things are much better for you when you’re not fighting.”

Klaus almost finds something to cling to, but then his phone comes to life in his pocket.

“Oh look, it’s your beloved uncle,” he draws out his lips in a grimace, knowing perfectly well that he isn’t fooling anyone with it: he really wants to hear Elijah’s voice.

“I won’t snoop!” the kid declares happily, taking an MP3-player out of her purse. “Tell him that he’s the handsomest, or whatever you’re supposed to say when…”

“Girl!” Klaus opens his eyes. “He’s my brother.”

“Dad, you’ve known each other for four quadrillion years, any brother would’ve died already, what sort of brother could he be, don’t drive yourself crazy. So, he’s a good friend, and…”

“One more word, Miss Mikaelson, and I’ll stop speaking to you,” Klaus announces almost seriously, looking worriedly at the display.

Something doesn’t add up: Elijah doesn’t wait so long, he hangs up after the fourth ring.

“Dad, but you were the one who told me!”

“So what that I told you. It’s a secret. And anyway,” Klaus presses “answer,” and brings the phone to his ear.

The kid keeps her word and immediately hides in her headphones, winking at Klaus with perfect charm, as though saying: dad, don’t be shy. Or, more likely: father, stop stalling.

It isn’t, of course, Elijah on the phone.

* * *

“What?”

Klaus frowns and shrugs a shoulder: his wrists have gone numb and the blood flowing from his lips doesn’t seem to want to stop.

“Tyler caught you by saying that he had me. Then – he caught me.”

“And…”

“Nothing will happen to her. Alex lives nearby, and you yourself know that the boy is the best warlock of his generation, and will defend her to the very last drop.”

Klaus feels a rush of strength – and makes a cut on his left palm. It’s torturously painful.

“I don’t know how you haven’t killed him yet,” Elijah says with feigned seriousness, his eyes cheerful as can be.

“The problem is that I can’t kill him,” Klaus responds.

Elijah looks at him thoughtfully, then asks all the same:

“If the goal was to catch us both, then why did I spend four days alone – and on the road?”

Klaus isn’t sure what to respond, and so he cuts his palm again and feels his strength flowing away with the little droplets of blood.

It’s just that he asked for proof, while Elijah didn’t. It’s just that the only thing that could’ve been used to catch him is Elijah. Even if it had been the kid, he would have gone for help. But instead he went by himself, without thinking, certain that he would save his brother.

“What do they want from us?”

Klaus shrugs his shoulders.

Elijah once more shakes his head in displeasure. He examines the iron door again, sits down on the floor, and asks:

“Shall we wait?”

Klaus nods. He’s very bitter, but there’s nothing to be done. Then a mad idea comes to mind, but, probably, he can… Probably, it’s time?

“Elijah, want to play Truth or Dare?”

“You mean to say Truth or Truth?” the other smiles. “Why not. First question: we’ll get out of here, truth?”

And Klaus grows cold inside. Because lying in such games is a bad omen, and though, of course, he doesn’t care about omens, it’s a bad beginning.

“Of course we’ll get out.” The sentence scrapes on his teeth, and Klaus’s heart, so recently, inconveniently brought to life, crashes down within him. 

Lying to the people closest to you is the hardest, most painful, and heart-rending thing there is. Klaus can’t say that only Elijah will get out, because then the man will start to pull at him, torment him, question him, will start to try to think things up, make plans, will curse him more than once.

_When you die – I’ll let him go, I give you Tyler Lockwood’s word. _

He’ll let him go, for sure. Just in order to torture him and make him live without his brother.

Elijah looks at him attentively and smiles – with the slightest hint of uncertainty.

“Niklaus?”

He catches on, of course, the damn game. He has to think something up, but more importantly, if he lied at the very first question, then what more is there to talk about? Why confess? And to what? Two thin streams of blood finally reach his jeans, and the fabric slowly becomes wet. And, indeed, how to confess, if Elijah is still going to live, probably with a feeling of guilt over… Over nothing, really. Goddamn Lockwood, burn in hell!

“Why did you come back?” Klaus asks, feeling his consciousness slipping away.

If only Alex were here to lift the spell, but he’s off with the kid, and any minute now they’ll get married – Elijah’s right after all. Klaus only now realizes that she was wearing a man’s leather jacket; it’s good if it’s just a sign that she’s taken and not something worse.

Elijah looks down, he smiles at something, and Klaus wants to smile with him, wants to take him by the hand, hug him, clap him on the shoulder, _hey, you know, we haven’t seen each other in two years, and I’ve gotten so sick of living without you. _Klaus clings to the barrier almost instinctively, and Elijah practically caresses him with his gaze.

“They got you good, then, Nik?”

“You didn’t answer my question, but you’re already asking your own,” he screws up his eyes in response, barely breathing.

His consciousness fades away in spurts, but Klaus knows that he can’t afford to pass out, and so he makes a third notch, already at his wrist. He grimaces involuntarily, full of suffering, and almost misses the surprised words:

“Isn’t it obvious that…”

* * *

“Gentlemen, I believe you should understand that he’s my brother and I’ll be with him until the end,” Elijah straightens the cuff of his shirt.

He looks at the pack of werewolves, calmly and arrogantly. He would probably spit in their direction if he could.

_Klaus smiles at the stupid phrase and walks between the sitting oafs, trying to push Lockwood from his spot._

“Elijah, you always have a choice.” Lockwood throws a coin and catches it in between the tips of his pointer and middle fingers, abrupt and quick. “Tell me that you don’t need Klaus, go away – and no one will hurt you. There’s only one condition: Klaus will hear about it. But what does that matter, right? We’ll settle our accounts with you, and your fucking bastard brother’ll kick the bucket, knowing that you dropped him.”

Elijah can’t hold back, breaks down, strikes down three werewolves, but Klaus only sees how a muscle on his face twitches, strained to the limit.

“Stop!” Lockwood yells. “Who do you think you are? He’ll be killed by a curse if something happens to me.”

There’s blood on Elijah’s hands, they’re covered in it to the elbows, his shirt is hopelessly ruined, and werewolf hearts are lying all about.

_Klaus wants to rejoice: his brother stood up for him, his brother got angry – because of him! But he can’t. He growls instead, clenches his fists, bellows at the top of his lungs._

Elijah is still deaf, doesn’t hear him, just as before. He stops, freezes with a bloody heart in his right hand, and looks at Lockwood questioningly and obediently.

“Drink,” the other man says, handing him the cup. “Drink, don’t dally now.”

And Elijah drinks, drinks the whole damn poison, drinks it for him – 

– _and now Klaus gives in. He screams aloud again, what does it matter, since this Elijah isn’t Elijah, but just a memory: he screams, breaking his vocal cords, trying to get through what an idiot Elijah is and how much Klaus loves him – and not like that – to the lifeless scene running its course before him. _

* * *

“Nik,” Elijah calls. “Nik.”

And Klaus slowly comes to his senses. It seems like he blacked out for a few seconds. Blood is flowing down his chin – and across his arms, and Klaus ponders for a moment whether a broken lip counts as a cut, then focuses his gaze on Elijah. It’s good that he didn’t completely black out, otherwise…

“What’s with you?” Elijah’s voice could freeze water.

“Everything’s perfect,” Klaus lies as if nothing had happened. “Everything’s perfect. I’m not regenerating since they filled me up with vervain. – But now it’s my turn to go, right?”

“I’m not going to answer, it’s boring.” Elijah finally takes a few steps to the wall and stands there, alone and unconquered.

Klaus immediately wants to run and stand at the opposite wall in turn, but his legs can’t support him, and his head is still spinning – the fucking curse. Then he counts the amount of cuts on his left arm and suddenly thinks that he finally knows their final number. There will be ten – one for each century. That means he’s on the fourth century now. That means now their friendship is at its peak: Klaus has managed to patch up his wounds, Elijah is almost married, a blessed age is at hand.

He’s full of questions, about forgiveness, about the kid, about everything at all on earth, but for some reason Klaus enquires casually:

“How much would you have to be paid to give up?” and doesn’t even wait for an answer.

“Your castle and your life to boot,” comes immediately from the wall, and Klaus’s eyes still fly open, feeling moisture trembling on his eyelashes. Because that’s the thing: Elijah too remembers their fourth century, their arguments, their best moments. It’s just a shame that Elijah will, in fact, soon receive Klaus’s life.

“Now tell me, right now. What did they curse us with, and what should I do with you!”

Breath stings against his cheek – and Klaus is too slow to find his bearings. When he does, Elijah turns out to be near him, holding out his hand in the air again, angry, direct and overly purposeful.

“I swear, Niklaus, if you go off and die somehow, I’ll resurrect you and kill you again myself,” Elijah says incoherently, and Klaus realizes with surprise that the other man is scared, that he’s inhumanly afraid.

“What idiocy,” Klaus looks up, and Elijah squints with distrust, unsure if he’s speaking the truth or lying shamelessly.

His brother presses his palms to the barrier and growls, unyielding in his impotence. Klaus collapses onto his side, and, gripping the blade more tightly, cuts himself for the fourth time.

* * *

“Look at the phone,” Lockwood hisses, turning red, “I have him. And if you don’t stop choking me…”

Klaus grips his fingers even tighter. Then he snatches the telephone from Lockwood’s hands, while almost squeezing the air, blood and flesh from Lockwood’s neck with his left hand.

It really is Elijah on the screen. Unconscious, defenseless, lying in some damned two-by-two box. It’s a livestream. A video stream. That means the bastard isn’t lying. That means…

Lockwood slips from his fingers like a fish from the hook – just a bit more and Klaus would have stabbed him in the throat. The boy immediately flies into a rage, jumps back into a far corner of his enormous house’s living room, and growls, ready to release the wolf.

“What do you want?”

And Lockwood instantly takes on his human form.

“Listen here. I’m not going to hide that I want to destroy you. Everything else is secondary.”

Klaus shrugs his shoulders and catches himself on the fact that he can’t turn his eyes away from Elijah’s face on the screen. It’s such stupidity, such childlessness – but he wants to look and look, without beginning or end.

Lockwood sits on a luxurious, silk-covered couch. He straightens his usual jacket. He tries to breath evenly, acting as though he wasn’t injured or wounded.

“You should hide him,” he says with condescension. “Klaus, you should’ve hidden him, but now it seems like I beat you. Just imagine, what a film. I. Beat. You.”

Klaus slightly raises his eyebrows. He curses to himself. He thinks about where he screwed up.

“You hid your daughter. But him? Why didn’t you hide him? Honestly, I didn’t even think that everything would work.”

Klaus launches the heavy phone at him so that it pierces into his chest – and looks happily at the bubbling blood. At least he can get a final revenge.

Because where could you hide _him_? In a coffin? Klaus already tried that; it’s not the best option.

* * *

Elijah looks at him, and Klaus looks away, immediately making two cuts.

_“You have a choice, either you die – or him. There’s no third option. It’s magic. Of course, you’re an fucking illiterate bastard, you didn’t study physics. But so be it, listen up. You’re tied to Elijah, like communicating vessels. You have exactly one life between you. You’re in balance, but the weaker side takes its strength from the other. And don’t forget about your injuries. We’ve let enough life out of you two to take away your immortality. And it keeps flowing away. Of course, from one of you to the other – but it also flows out of you both. Remember, Elijah’s blood is weak. Unlike yours. Take this knife. Every drop of blood is strength for him. But, of course, you prefer yourself to him, don’t you? The choice is yours. I’ll come in three days and release the survivor.”_

Ten is the perfect number of cuts to die. One for each century.

“Niklaus,” Elijah asks in a near-iron tone. “Answer me. What’s the idea? You don’t need to save me; tell me. If it’s magic – two heads are better than one.”

Klaus freezes on the ninth cut. His fingers grow numb and the blade falls onto the ground. Elijah jumps onto his feet.

“A knife? Nik… Nik? Where’s the blood coming from? Nik?” And after a second: “Nik, give me the knife.”

Klaus laughs wryly:

“Elijah, everything’s okay.”

“Nik, get a hold of yourself right now and give the knife here.”

There’s something in Elijah’s voice that makes Klaus raise his head slightly and feel considerably better.

“Why do you… But I need it.”

“Nik.”

“Elijah,” Klaus traces his brother’s face with his eyes and tries to entreat him with his gaze. To ask him not to play dumb. To allow Klaus not to explain, since he doesn’t have the strength to do so anyway.

He gropes for the blade with his fingers. A tenth cut and it’s over, no suffering or emotions, he won’t even need to confess to anything anymore.

“Nik, get over here,” Elijah suddenly requests, and Klaus freezes. 

“Come on, Nik, I can see that you’ve thought up something unpleasant. I’m not going to talk you out of it, but let me at least… I’ll take your hand. Through the spell. At least our fingers will feel it, my reckless brother.”

It’s like Klaus is suddenly flooded with warm, sweet blood; he wants to breathe more, and just live. Because Elijah is looking at the floor, Elijah is confused and afraid, all because of him, because of his _reckless brother, _god, how tender, he just wants to cry.

Klaus pushes off from the floor with his feet and crawls to Elijah, turns his back, and presses his palms to the barrier, dropping, of course, the knife… But nothing happens.

Elijah, damn Elijah, grabs the small blade and rushes for the door. Klaus wails aloud: he was tricked, like a child. But what’s Elijah going to do with that knife? He’s just won’t let Klaus cut himself a tenth time. The cell is impenetrable –

– Elijah drives the knife into the lock with such force that it’s torn to hell, he practically tears it from the surface of the door. But that’s impossible. The room is made to withstand hybrids, could it really be that just… Did he know the necessary point to hit at? Or did he just hit it with a strength that no one had even imagined possible?

The door swings wide open, Elijah disappears, reappears again, dragging some dark-skinned girl behind him, and says such things to her that Klaus thinks: _I’ve gone mad, I’ve finally lost it, ‘cuz there’s no way my brother could speak to a woman with such vulgarity. _The barrier falls, the girl’s head flies to the side, Elijah spits out every curse under the sun, _it wasn’t that bitch that cursed us, _but Klaus doesn’t care. His consciousness slowly slips away, emptiness and silence sink in, and that’s all good, peaceful, and right. 

Through already-closing eyes, Klaus sees how Elijah, clever Elijah, slashes through half his own wrist with the deformed blade.

* * *

“Elijah?”

Klaus shivers. Either from the cold or the unending pain. Or from the fact that he’s being carried in someone’s arms. He looks around, his consciousness flashes by in pieces, a patchwork quilt like the ones everyone used to love to cover themselves in a hundred years before.

The sky is blue. The dust is a mix of yellow, grey, and brown. The bushes are a faded green. The blood on his wet shirt is almost burgundy. The cheek which his own cheek has to graze against is bristly. The last feeling sobers Klaus.

_Elijah is carrying him in his arms through the unending mirages of the desert, and Klaus realizes that they’re somewhere in Nevada. _

Elijah. In his arms.

Klaus is wrecked by the endless humiliation and the even more endless tenderness. There are two wet trails along his face, and Klaus grips even harder. Then he remembers that he should see the job through, and thinks about how to die. His spine is damp where Elijah is touching it, and Klaus remembers about the slashed wrist. He tried, he tried so hard, damned fool.

“Don’t move,” Elijah says, a little derisively and very, very quietly.

Of course, Klaus moves. He pushes away. He looks untrustingly at his brother, remembering what the kid said.

“Now I have more strength. Don’t even think of pulling some trick. One life for the two of us. My blood is flowing into yours, at least metaphorically. And if you break the cycle and kill yourself? Who knows what will happen. Maybe I’ll die too.”

Klaus doesn’t want to argue. His spine has gone terribly numb. For some reason, he feels like the happiest _man _on earth, and even his split lip doesn’t bother him anymore. He needs to die – but even that’s not so bad. Though… every spell has its loophole, after all.

Elijah stumbles and Klaus’s eyes fly open. It’s terrifying weakness, but not because all of their strength went to Elijah. Part of their blood flowed away into the earth. Of course, Elijah is no fool. Klaus was only saved because his brother cut wide and deep. But now the whole game isn’t worth a thing. Lockwood took care of that as well. He left them in the middle of the desert – just in case the little witch couldn’t handle them. It’s even fair; the boy will go far. Though he’d better go to hell if something happens to Elijah.

Klaus weighs his options. He is – in the end – a living being, while Elijah is a vampire, so if he were to wave bloodied hands in front of his brother’s face… Klaus almost moans aloud. It’s an idiotic option, and most importantly, it’s unfair with regard to Elijah, who would never try to take a taste of his brother’s blood. Klaus needs to kill himself in a different way.

For once, Elijah has grown some stubble, _finally, _and Klaus laughs, running a hand across his brother’s cheek. Elijah smiles slightly, looking forward as before. It’s quiet in the damn desert; some insects are chirring and no cars are audible for a hundred miles around. Eventually, Klaus is finally overcome by the measured pace, and he thinks that he could go on like this forever, and alright, sure, his brother’s lugging him about in his arms, but they’re not arguing, Elijah isn’t reproaching him for something or other; instead he’s smiling, and Klaus is touching his cheek like a thousand damn years ago, when they measured their strength against one another and then flopped about on the grass, almost dying of exhaustion, not speaking with one another, angry, and bristling with offense, and Klaus prodded at random with a finger, while Elijah burst out into loud laughter…

“No sleeping!” Elijah irritably shakes him, and he feels the sting of shame even through the calm mirage.

Of course he does, Elijah is lugging him about in his arms.

And then Klaus realizes then sleep is death. And he almost screams out that he’s not ready. That he doesn’t want to go away. Only on his own conditions. But sleep pulls him to the ground, and it’s hard for him to hold up his head.

“Elijah…”

“Yes?”

“Listen, you’re not ready. Really. You never give up. You always believe in me. But I promise that I’m going to disappoint you for the last time.”

Elijah frowns and is silent, stubbornly stepping forward.

“Elijah, I…” Again, Klaus doesn’t know what to say. All the _I, love, _and _you_s of the world are blown from his lips by the dry wind, and the words seem unnecessary and redundant. He wants Elijah to live, and not to torture himself, right? Then he needs to… “You should live. No matter what happens, you should live. Just – live.”

Elijah angrily shakes him once more, and Klaus would’ve laughed if he could. All those fairytales about the composure of the elder Mikaelson are such wild nonsense.

“Even without me – live. These were a great ten centuries, though, I admit… there were some kinks. That’s it, I’ll shut up, otherwise I’ll slip into platitudes.”

Klaus really does fall silent. He looks at his brother’s stubbly cheek, and the meaningless little wrinkles around his eyes, at his thick, thick hair, and tries to finally admit to himself where he messed up. When he fell in love with his own brother. When he started to screw beautiful women without stopping to feel anything at all. And even on death’s doorstep, he can’t come up with anything to explain it. It just – happened.

“Elijah,” he calls, desperately wanting his brother to say something, anything, and looks at the corners of his mouth, frozen like stone. And it’s the truth – his brother isn’t ready to lose him. What a wonderful day. Klaus runs a hand across the other cheek, and Elijah is finally distracted from his measured stride, looks Klaus in the eye.

“What a little girl you are,” he says coldly.

Klaus freezes.

“The fucking pathetic family stain. Fuck, the unwanted _bastard._”

Klaus’s eyes fly open. His blood, almost frozen still, starts to rush through his veins. He seizes hold of Elijah’s shoulder with his right hand, pushing himself away with more force, trying to tear himself away, unbelievably angry.

He understands after around ten seconds, and Klaus thinks that he’s so close that he’s going to kiss this cold idiot, who is so unready to lose him that he’ll say whatever it takes to put Klaus in a rage; angry, Klaus wants to live, and Elijah simply knows him too well.

Instead of a kiss, Klaus pulls Elijah to him by the collar of his shirt.

“You’ll answer for that,” he laughs with the last of his strength. “For ‘little girl,’ and for ‘bastard,’ and for ‘fucking pathetic.’”

Elijah just purses his lips together more tightly.

* * *

Klaus comes to somewhere on the curb of a road. His vision takes a long time to focus, and he searches for his brother with his eyes, desperate and afraid. He convulses and painfully hits against something. He tenses, suffering terribly – and sees a goddamn _payphone straight out of the seventies _right in front of him.

Elijah is standing nearby. He’s looking down, and the ugly cut shines on the monochrome of his wrist. His posture is purposeful – and… Klaus doesn’t have the strength to finish the thought. He suddenly remembers about _bastard, _and feels a deep irritation. Even if Elijah wanted to save him, even if he wanted to anger him, why didn’t he do it in a different way? Fuck, what the fuck. Thinking in monosyllabic profanities is easiest, so he needs to come to his senses – and switch to thinking in elevated language.

No, what was that? Klaus nervously tries to think of something more offensive than _bastard, _but suffers a crushing defeat. Anger drives the blood through his veins. He wants to scream, jump onto his feet, and slam Elijah’s forehead into the damn payphone. Then – then kiss him already. First, timidly touch his lips to the edge of –– stop, timidity is for… for the epistolary genre of romance. He’s Klaus Mikaelson, and he takes what belongs to him. Sometimes – by force. So there, he wants to press their lips together and not let go, feel under Elijah’s shirt with his hands, tangle his fingers in his brother’s thick hair.

Klaus finds his thoughts embarrassing, funny, and inhumanly pleasing. Or, maybe, completely humanly pleasing: he knows that nothing of the sort will ever happen. But before death you’re allowed to dream a bit. Well, since Elijah thinks he’s a bastard, a girl, and just overall… fucking pathetic. Klaus’s whole body shudders and he realizes that it’s impossible to die of arousal. It took a single moment for his daze to disperse.

Elijah continues to hypnotize the telephone with his gaze.

Klaus clears his throat:

“Come on, let’s not…”

“Silence,” the other man says coldly, and Klaus shudders, feeling like a naughty child.

_The fucking payphone is on the verge of starting to stare back in response, and the surrealism of the scene frightens Klaus to the brink of stammering._

Finally, Elijah raises his injured hand – and methodically rolls up his sleeve. Klaus inhales a cloud of dust, begins to cough, and stops speculating. Even if Hope, the little angel, or Rebekah, thinks something up… even if he manages to reach someone on the phone… even if the damned payphone works…

Which is doubtful.

Elijah unhurriedly adjusts the buttons on his right cuff, and rolls that side up to the elbow as well. The cloth snaps distinctly, while tumbleweed runs stereotypically across the roadside. It seems like there are no cars on the entire planet.

“No really, why am I sitting?” Klaus begins to seethe. “I’d prefer to bleed out on the road at least, not at some…”

Elijah slowly turns his head towards him, and the words freeze in his throat.

“What did I say?”

Klaus wants to be surprised, but then Elijah takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders – and hits the payphone with his elbow. He hits it so hard that for an instant the whole world turns white for Klaus as a well. There is a ringing silence, and then something within the machine really does _rattle_.

Klaus lifts up his head: in the little window for change lays a very, very old, shabby coin. He can’t tell its value, or even its color. Elijah doesn’t stop surprising him: first the lock, now…

“Hope, honey, it’s me. Your dad and I are in a real mess. We need Alex. Honey, I don’t care at all, I know that he sleeps at your place.” Klaus winces; though, at the moment, he doesn’t care either. “By all appearances, I’m standing at some payphone in the middle of Nevada… Now, relax, Niklaus is alive. But I need a witch – and someone to pick us up. Have Alex work his magic? What, you got the coordinates from the number? Honey, again, I don’t care, just get someone to pick us up. We’re on the brink. And I won’t let your father die alone, so…”

The connection apparently breaks, and flawless Elijah sits down flawlessly in the dust besides Klaus. Klaus pointedly looks coldly in the other direction, and then Elijah pulls him close by the neck, stroking the back of his head. Not uncomfortably, though. Just as Klaus needs it.

“They’re coming, Nik.”

“From Connecticut?”

“They’ll send someone. You think that Alex doesn’t have friends all over the world?”

“Is he at least twenty, or is he in disguise?” Klaus growls powerlessly, trying to shake off the affectionate hand. _Elijah might as well kiss the back of his head._

“I see you’re a crazy dad. He’s twenty, twenty. Of course, what should he do when he turns forty…”

“He’ll run off,” Klaus tiredly argues. Just to argue.

“You know,” Elijah says, “I’m afraid that it’s not the sort of love that you run away from. You found her a perfect defender, brother, but that’s just…”

“Come on now, Elijah,” Klaus says, feeling poison practically dripping from his teeth. “Say that I’m fucking pathetic, that I’m unworthy, that…”

_Elijah presses a kiss to the back of his head._

*** * ***

Klaus straightens his shirt, though in vain. He and Elijah probably make a pretty picture. Elijah just smiles wryly with bloody lips (and where’d that blood on his face come from?):

“Don’t worry. Hope will…”

He doesn’t manage to finish. Something falls somewhere nearby (judging by the sound, something very heavy), and the kid rushes into the room. She freezes on the spot, looks around, appraises the situation. _Just as he taught her._

Klaus looks around as well, from her perspective. It’s a giant old house, whose living room’s wall is covered entirely in windows; the couch in the middle is too big and very out of place. It’s rather dark because of the thick blinds. Klaus and Elijah are both alive. They look resplendent, of course. Klaus, dust-covered and filthy, is bleeding half-transparent pus out on the rug; it’s shameful to look like this in front of his own daughter. Blood is clotted on Elijah’s face – and there’s also a charming bruise on Elijah’s right cheekbone. His shirt has escaped his pants, there’s a tear at his knee, and no one remembered his jacket. But he’s standing and smiling like the goddamn king of the world. He’s leaning against the fireplace, looking at Hope. As though there’s no black cut on his wrist, no bruising, as though he’s wearing a three-piece suit, as though he’s carrying a pocket watch on a platinum chain, and all the world’s women were…

Klaus stops himself. Hope turns her gaze from him to Elijah, waiting for a smile from the other man – and then, for some reason, runs to Klaus and throws herself around his neck.

Elijah tries not to smile, then lights up for a moment anyway – and Klaus’s heart stops.

And the kid rushed to him, not to her uncle; the kid loves him, look at how she hugs him until his ribs crack.

“Hope, in your place, I’d be more careful. Your dad is already a thousand-something, after all,” Elijah looks at the floor with feigned seriousness.

Klaus shakes his head and also looks away. He’s not convinced that they got out, because he had been too convinced that he was going to have to bid everyone farewell. He has no strength to admit to himself that there will be another round. That he needs to live. That he needs to tell himself every time that his daughter loves him more than anything else in this world, maybe even more than her mother. That Elijah… That Elijah is here. That Elijah is lighting the way for him, like the sun on the horizon. It’s embarrassing, he doesn’t want this. Living is a lot harder than dying. Especially harder than dying heroically.

“Dad,” the kid pronounces mournfully, “oh, dad.”

And Klaus remembers himself and embraces her in return, kisses her forehead. The kid shakes lightly, as though in a fever.

“Hey,” Klaus says sluggishly. “Hey, Elijah, we’ve…”

The kid throws herself on the floor and starts to snap. She bits her lip until she draws blood, and Klaus has no idea what to do. Hybrids are a very unique type of creature. Hybrids by birth, even more so.

“What’s happening?” Elijah asks, already trying to catch the jerking girl.

Klaus doesn’t even have the strength to lift a finger.

“Niklaus, for God’s sake!”

Elijah, of course, is trying to puzzle everything out. Hope snatches him by the wrist, bites it slightly, but…

“What the hell have you all done!” Alex yells, appearing out of nowhere, pushing Elijah away. “Hope, get a hold of yourself. Come to your senses.”

The kid snaps and twists, and Klaus answers for her:

“It’s too late. She’ll turn.”

Alex raises too human, too accusing eyes on him, but Klaus doesn’t care anymore. Yes, the kid freaked. Yes, she couldn’t hold back. But who’s that going to kill?

“Alex, I don’t want to seem impolite, but your _girlfriend _will be fine,” Elijah says calmly, finally coming to his senses (did the bite really sober him?). “The thing is that she was provoked by concern for Niklaus and I. Therefore, if we die…”

“Yes, yes.” Alex wipes a hand across his forehead. “I remember. The road from Nevada and the spell restraining you two. You don’t have that much time. I know everything. Just…”

He’s just worried about the kid. In fact, Alex doesn’t care at all about Klaus and Elijah, that’s obvious. But if something upsets Hope… Klaus looks at the boy with approval.

A charming, fluffy she-wolf stands on floor in front of Alex.

“Hope, I’ll fix everything right now, please, get a hold of yourself,” he sighs.

The wolf pushes a paw into his shoulder, and Klaus smiles.

*** * ***

“No,” Elijah says. “I can kiss him. What’s the deal?”

Klaus barely restrains his groan, and Alex, by all appearances, his smirk. Hope scampered off ten minutes earlier, incapable of bearing the idiocy of the situation.

It turns out that lifting the complicated spell that almost led an original vampire and a no-less original hybrid to the grave is not only a terribly simple, but also somehow amusing, affair. In any case, for Alex, damn him, who has been mocking them both for the last hour.

Now Elijah has joined the outrage.

“Listen, oh sovereign of payphones and door locks,” Klaus drawls, “how about we pass on the amateur theatrics.”

“What theatrics?” Elijah shrugs his shoulders, leaning on the doorpost. “Well, if you’re so against it, I’ll shave. Although who would’ve thought it.”

Klaus covers his face with a palm and feels a burning shame filling him up inside.

“Niklaus, listen. If Alex thinks that this is the simplest way…”

“That’s right,” the other interrupts. “Once more, for the slow-witted. You’re tied by a very powerful and very ornate spell. Of course, we can break our heads against the wall or something of that sort, but personally I prefer to simply solve such riddles. We need to cut the knot, that’s it.”

_Fucking Alexander the Great. _

“Forgive me, sweetheart,” Klaus says haughtily, unable to contain himself. “You think it’s simpler to kiss your own brother?”

The little creature knows something, or else someone spilled to him. Oh, how nice it’d be to leave a handsome, curly-haired corpse here.

“Niklaus, that’s enough. If this breaks the link, I’m not against it.” Elijah raises his damned eyes to him, and Klaus is ready to scream and rage, take him, kiss him…

“Alright, alright, I’m kidding. No, that is, I’d tell any other people, uhhh, vampires, to spit on convention, because a kiss is the fundamental imitation of connection and unity. But you’re… you’re… Mikaelsons,” Alex half stammers.

“Enough, Nik,” Elijah frowns. “We need to end the spell, time isn’t on our side.”

“Yes. Jenny had you for a while, though…” Alex looks them over from head to toe, as though looking for faults. “Though she didn’t do too bad; she put an excellent stasis on the spell.”

“Other options?” Klaus almost growls.

“Yeah,” Alex responds. “So, let me think. If we ignore all this nonsense that we don’t have time for… Tell each other your worst secret. That’ll work too. I’m not going to listen, Mr. Mikaelson, promise!” He throws up his hands, as though defending himself from Klaus. “At this rate you’re going to stare me to death, and what’re you going to do?”

“Let’s kiss, s-s-shit,” Klaus stutters in bewilderment. “And we’ll tell Hope that you ran off and didn’t promise to write.”

“Okay, so the secret’s a no-go as well, got it. I just need to somehow… somehow reverse the spell. Do you understand? It ties you. I need to show it that you’re already tied together.”

Klaus’s heart sinks.

“Tied?” he asks again.

“Yeah.” Alex sits down on the couch and wipes his eyes: it’s hard to breathe in the room because of all the scented candles and other sandalwood. And no one would expect such a manly and attractive boy to be engaged in such nonsense. “But just not in the way you were at birth. I need a different kind of tie. God, I can’t explain it with words anyway. The spell is a lie, darkness. I need the truth.”

“Yeah,” Klaus echoes. “And can you find Lockwood?”

Alex looks at him, perplexed, and Klaus feels his neck started to burn.

“I would put the question like this: ‘When we figure out the spell that can kill us, will you find Lockwood?’”

“Yeah,” Klaus repeats. “But, look here, the spell’s lifted.”

Now the most important thing is to survive Elijah’s stare. But he doesn’t know, how could he know about Klaus’s feelings, right?

Alex frowns for a moment, then jerks his head up:

“What did you do? How did you two… How did _you_ lift the spell? Klaus, tell me, for God’s sake. I don’t understand, and that’s really bad. Only a powerful truth could lift it. Or a kiss. What did you do?”

“I’m going to get changed, yeah,” Klaus huffs with the last of his strength. “And Lockwood… alright, listen. We’ll find Lockwood another time.”

“No, wait. Wait,” Alex is visibly hysterical. “What did you do? I get it, we’re safe now, but how did you… And if you lifted it yourself, then why didn’t you do that before?”

“Kiddo, you’re sleeping with my daughter, calm down,” Klaus waves a hand. “And since we made it successfully to our newest house in Omaha, where we’re behind every defense, imaginable and otherwise, I’m going to shower, then sleep. Maybe I’ll even take a bath. That’s what a monster I am.”

Klaus smirks and leaves the room.

He doesn’t even look at Elijah: it’s too frightening.

But stumble his room, shut all the locks, prop the dresser against the door, finally, discover Hope sitting silently on his bed, collapse on his knees in front of her and burst into tears – that, he can do.

* * *

“Niklaus,” his brother is persistently attempting to force his way through the door.

Klaus immediately has dozens of thoughts about that, but they’re all unconnected, drunken and disordered.

“Niklaus, your daughter’s gone off somewhere with her boyfriend. And I still have a hybrid bite. Yes, I understand that you promised to punish me. But how about we do that later somehow? Seriously, brother, I’m not…”

“What aren’t you?” Klaus opens the door –

– and can’t refrain from raising his eyebrows. Elijah looks impeccable. When did he even manage. Klaus only managed to get drunk on the whiskey. He changed his clothes as well, but only into a frivolous undershirt and no less frivolous skinny jeans that had been lying around here for something like the last twenty years.

Evidently, Elijah has a closet in every house stocked with a score of suits, a dozen pairs of shoes, half a hundred shirts and countless multitudes of belts for his pants.

_He’s magnificent. _

“Brother,” Elijah says, smiling slightly. “Give me a little blood. Your daughter bit me.”

With those words he points to his swollen wrist.

“All her father,” Klaus shrugs his shoulders with feigned incomprehension.

Elijah wipes a lock of hair from his face, and Klaus notices that his cheeks are smooth.

“I’ll shave,” suddenly beats in his ears, and Klaus feels slightly dizzy. He should have agreed to the kiss. Then write everything off on stress, and then… But now how will he ever find out what it’s like to kiss Elijah? Sweet? Bitter? Soft? Hard?

His phone vibrates in his pocket. He manages with great difficulty to quell the desire to break something.

_Dad, I called Damon, but don’t freak, we’re just friends, he’s a good guy, _the first text reads.

“Jesus fuck!” Klaus spits out, tilting the phone to himself and barely restraining himself from breaking the phone in half.

Elijah gives him a strange and questioning look.

_Anyway, I asked him what to do. Relax, I said it was for myself._

“Niklaus,” Elijah impatiently crosses the threshold of the room and attempts to take away his phone, thankfully, unsuccessfully. “I don’t think that’s a top priority at the moment. Your daughter bit me. I’m not sure if after a day and a half on the brink of death, I also want to undergo hallucinations from the bite. Your phone can wait, _n’est-ce pas?_”

_Anyway, when he comes for your blood, cut up your neck. Damon says that it’s sexy. I dunno, Damon’s still pretty ancient too, somehow everything’s more straightforward and simple with me and Alex. But anyway, he meant that you’re alive, and Uncle Elijah’s a vampire, so drinking from the throat – well, what could be better._

And to conclude:

_Just don’t be dumb, dad!_

Klaus hurls the phone at the wall with such force that it breaks apart into tiny pieces. Yeah, of course he just had to spill everything to the little troll. She called Damon. Fucking, fuck, _fuck_!

“Oh, I see.” Elijah carefully straightens his cuff, under which the bite is visible. “We’re not talking again. I just wanted to remind you…”

Klaus looks intently at him, and is completely incapable of looking his fill. He goes to the wooden table, squeezes a glass in his hand until it cracks, and uses a shard to cut into his own neck. With his shaking hands, it’s lucky that he managed to get the jugular straight on, instead of hitting the carotid artery. It’s terribly painful, and worse, Elijah is looking at him with completely crazed eyes, as though he’s afraid to come closer and do something wrong, as though all his rules…

“Go on,” Klaus wheezes. “It’s healing up, after all.”

He, alpha for life, exposes his throat – and desires only one thing. That Elijah would finish what Lockwood started. That everything would finally end, that…

“I won’t,” Elijah says, and Klaus thinks that his brother has lost his mind. His undershirt is already completely soaked, sticking to his back and chest, the air smells sweet, and this… this princess is putting on airs!

“Go on,” Klaus requests, and suddenly he can read a lot of emotions on Elijah’s face. Elijah’s face is covered in poorly concealed panic, and uneasy veins run along his skin near his eyes. He comes a little closer, staring greedily, as he is – a monster. And Klaus just wants Elijah to finally drink his blood.

“I understand, Nik,” comes very quietly. “This is revenge against me. For ‘little girl,’ for everything that I said. But I… I just didn’t want you to give up. You’re impossible to convince, you know, you’re as stubborn as an ox. The only thing to do is force you to get angry. And you took everything at face value. I’m so tired of your tests, brother.”

Elijah frowns, and the ripples smooth out on his face, the veins calm themselves. Klaus trembles a bit, not knowing what to expect. Elijah presses Klaus to him, holding his back, then turns his own head to the side – and touches his lips to the nearly healed cut on Klaus’s neck. He sucks at the blood, constantly lapping with his tongue; Klaus expects his rough fangs to rip open the skin and plunge into it, seize it, _enter _him; he expects that Elijah won’t be able to stop and will drain him dry. But Elijah _sucks _at it, drop by drop, as though in little kisses, and that overwhelms Klaus so much that he almost moans aloud, inhaling noisily and pressing his mouth closed with his palm.

Elijah stops for a moment, and Klaus stills, ready to damn everything, take him and kiss him. Elijah breathes heavily straight into Klaus’s neck, and then touches his lips to it again – and then his tongue, licking off the sticky remains of the blood. He withdraws and wipes his mouth with his fingers.

Klaus is shaken by a small shudder and thoughts like _did you like that? _and the words _all, covered, in, this, blood _fight to escape his throat.

“Did I pass the test?” Elijah enquires calmly, looking at his healed wrist with interminable interest.

Klaus takes a deep breath, calms his wildly racing mind and, in a stranger’s voice, says:

“You passed.”

“Am I forgiven for my rudeness?”

Elijah isn’t looking at him, and Klaus wants to wail. But he just wipes his neck, embarrassed, and winces a little: it hurts. What would Hope say: _a_ _hickey__? _Or what’s the word used nowadays?

“You’re forgiven.”

“And what about for the fact that I insisted that we shouldn’t part? That I didn’t want to let Hope _leave_ _us_?”

Klaus pushes Elijah away lightly, and goes to the table to lean on it: his legs have stopped supporting him. Of course, he cuts himself on the broken glass, swears, and doesn’t know where to look. The only thing left for him to do would be to get his phone and ask _Damon goddamn Salvatore _for advice in seducing vampires.

“Want help?” Elijah asks quietly, suddenly appearing very close by.

And Klaus becomes flustered, then pushes him away again, staining his brother’s shirt with blood:

“Help yourself, Elijah. What’re you up to? Am I really a _little girl _to you or something? Why didn’t you bite my neck, huh?”

He advances step after step, while Elijah retreats, and doesn’t look at him, turns his gaze away.

“If I’d bit you, I wouldn’t have stopped,” the other man finally says, and Klaus is ready to throw himself right off the third floor and then run a hundred miles just in order not to put an end to this awful conversation.

Elijah turns and goes to the damn door, head down. Then Klaus, in all his stupidity, slams his hand against the table – and immediately cuts himself – in a thousand spots, judging by the feel.

“Help,” he requests hoarsely, and Elijah turns back.

His face is calm, not distorted by the mask of a beast.

“How should I help you?” For some reason he is busying himself with his cuffs again, standing still. “My tongue, my lips, my fangs – everything’s at your disposal.”

Klaus looks at Elijah, hounded, without understanding if the other man is joking or serious. But how can someone be serious – and say _such a thing_? That means, he’s joking, which means…

“Elijah,” Klaus breathes out, “you don’t understand what I want. You’ll probably never understand. But that’s for the best. Let’s forget our disagreements. We’re alive, we need to find Lockwood, and I’m so glad that we’re not fighting anymore.”

Elijah takes a step forward to meet him, and lightly raises Klaus’s injured hand, bringing it to his face.

“Why.” He removes the largest shard, and Klaus winces. “You know, try as I might, I can’t figure out one thing.” He presses his lips to the cut and tenderly _sucks out the blood _once more, his tongue traces across the little cut, and Klaus loses it, completely and irrevocably, Klaus’s vision blurs, Klaus has waited so long, but what’s happening… what’s Elijah’s tongue doing? why are Elijah’s lips kissing his palm? why does this make him ache so much inside? why is Elijah looking up at him without having let go of his palm?

Klaus can’t bear it, and he turns to look at the windowsill, searching for something interesting there.

“There are still five shards left now, Nik,” Elijah says, tearing himself away from the palm, and Klaus wants to slice his own throat again.

Elijah is probably doing it out of brotherly love. Well, he’s carrying on as though with a dumb little kid that cut himself.

_It’s necessary, i–m–p–e–r–a–t–i–v–e that Klaus make him understand, convince him. _

So that he finally clears that expression of endless tenderness and even more endless love off of his face, so that he finally replaces it with his usual mask, so that his coldness and disgust finally show.

_Klaus thinks that he’ll die if Elijah understands, becomes convinced – and starts to hate him._

Nevertheless, he takes the already-extracted shard, pulls his hand back, looks into his brothers eyes, and, without looking away, cuts himself again, deeply, deliberately, squinting, twisting his lips scornfully, dotting all the i's and almost screaming out aloud the latest completely terrifying set of words that comes to him: _how, you, lick, my, wounds, is, driving, me, crazy. _

“Nicky,” Elijah says just like he would to a small child, and Klaus feels a string snap within him, while any minute now tears will come flooding from his eyes. “Nicky, I don’t understand why you think that you were in my memories without me seeing you. Or hearing you.”

Understanding comes to Klaus slowly, and he suddenly looks up at Elijah, but the other man is overly absorbed in his palm: he’s studying it, as though confused: finally, with deft fingers he extracts shard after shard, stroking the uninjured patches of skin.

HE KNOWS – 

something in Klaus’s mind shouts very loudly.

* * *

“You know,” Klaus asserts barely audibly, holding Elijah back by the elbow. “If you know, then why all… this?”

Elijah opens his bloodstained lips just a crack, as though he wants to say something, but stills, and smiles barely noticeably, looking first into Klaus’s eyes, then at his torn palm.

“Elijah?” Klaus asks again, hardly audibly.

He’ll hate me, curse me; this sort of thing isn’t forgiven.

“Niklaus,” the other man finally responds coldly. “If you have no objection, allow me to take care of your cuts.” And he presses his lips to the most recent one.

Klaus pulls back his hand. He retreats to the window without taking his eyes off of his brother. Elijah seems unsatisfied, but stays still, crosses his arms across his chest, shakes his head a bit and purses his lips.

Already at the window, Klaus notices Elijah’s pants.

“Oh,” he says, feeling a new wave of emotion, overwhelming him from head to toe.

He feels humiliation, shame, _the desire to extend his hand so that his brother can lick it clean. _To expose his neck, so that Elijah can at least do something, since everything else is a not an _option_?

Naturally, Klaus freezes, naturally, he stares, and Elijah raises his eyebrows all the same.

“I presume you’re familiar with the particularities of male physiology?”

Klaus finally loses the power of speech. He stands – and gasps in vain for air, feeling all the delights of _male physiology _for himself.

“Niklaus.” Elijah’s voice sounds mildly. “You wanted this, didn’t you?”

And Klaus gathers himself. Like an ancient Byzantine mosaic coming together into one canvas. He takes a deep breath. Two steps to Elijah. He takes Elijah’s shoulder in the fingers of his cut hand. Staring straight forward, he whispers:

“El, I… You still don’t get it. Allow me to leave.”

Now – to the door; it’s right nearby, he just needs to reach out.

A sweet, almost cloying scent fills the room, and Klaus doesn’t need to turn around in order to know that Elijah cut himself. He hears the blood dribbling onto the floor, rat-a-tat-tat, hears a trickle crawling across the skin, and now his male physiology has simply gone mad.

“But why, why?!” Klaus yells, turning back.

Elijah wipes his fingers with a cambric handkerchief in an absolutely aristocratic gesture. Crimson blood flows across his cheek, touching the edge of his lips.

There’s a trail, as if he’d cut his cheek. A thin mark. Klaus remembers how the exact same thing happened in their seventh (or eighth?) century as well, how he dabbed at it with the handkerchief himself, how Elijah watched, not breathing, how…

“I love you,” Klaus says tiredly.

He expects mockery. Taunts. Sarcasm. In the best case – _Well, finally._

But Elijah extends the handkerchief to him and quietly responds:

“I love you.”

And Klaus leaps forward, grabs the handkerchief, presses it to the cut, stares feverishly, first at Elijah’s eyes, then at his lips. He doesn’t know what to say, what to do; he doesn’t know how to clarify things, doesn’t know anything and can’t understand.

“Nicky, I’ve loved you for a very long time in a very wrong way. But it was a surprise for me.” Elijah suddenly looks away, and then smiles a little shyly. “When the spell connected our thoughts… It was a surprise for me that you love me in the same way.”

Klaus loses it, he moans aloud, takes the handkerchief away from Elijah’s face and presses his lips to the cut, moving upwards, smearing, rather than collecting, the blood. He shudders lightly, then presses his lips to Elijah’s cheekbones – and lingers, breathes uncertainly, and uncertainly cracks his lips open to leave damp trail; Elijah’s blood is delicious, sweet, and alluring, but for the first time in ten centuries, Klaus doesn’t want blood, Klaus wants something else, and he does everything in reverse, licks at the blood, moving downwards, finds Elijah’s lips and presses against them. He slides his partially-healed hand under Elijah’s shirt, using the other hand to take his brother by the neck, run fingers through his hair.

Elijah doesn’t move a muscle, and all of Klaus’s hopes are smashed again, as though falling from a cliff into the abyss below.

“Do you want this?” he asks uncertainly, retreating slightly.

Instead of responding, the Elijah, the idiot, takes Klaus by the collar of his shirt, renounces himself, and kisses him, eagerly and very tenderly, running his tongue across Klaus’s lips, but very obviously _taking the initiative, _and Klaus laughs right into the kiss, holds him back by the shoulders and says: “Wait, wait,” – withdraws, then gives in and kisses back, pressing their lips together, taking Elijah’s shirt in both hands, pulling the other man to him, wanting to be closer, closer, closer, please, just don’t let this ever end.

Eventually, they start to run out of air.

“El,” Klaus says, pulling him towards the bed. “El,” he whispers feverishly into the other man’s lips. “Brothers shouldn’t do this, I know for sure that this is wrong.”

Elijah pushes him onto the bed, and ends up on top of him. He presses Klaus down by the shoulder until he’s lying horizontally, and doesn’t allow him to rise. Elijah dives downward – and Klaus feels another mark blossom on the right side of his neck, feels Elijah bite at his skin.

Physiology is just killing him, and Klaus, in a bestial rage, holds Elijah back at arm’s length

Elijah is completely calm, except he’s breathing fast and irregular, sliding his tongue against his lips as though something quite delicious was taken from him.

“Klaus, I don’t intend to console you. But I don’t think I’m mistaken in saying that we’ve been going around this for centuries – and all our arguments and problems… Hell, Nicky, why act like a child. Who could set rules for me and you, when we’re the oldest and wisest creatures in the world? Or do you think we’re subject to human morality?

That name, that goddamn _Nicky, _drives Klaus crazy, and he moans in agreement, as if in a fever. He doesn’t remember where the name came from, he only remembers that Elijah said, a long time ago, more than a hundred years back, that he liked that the Russian Tsar had that nickname, that it was cute, and…

“Or,” Elijah suddenly raises his eyebrows, himself still held upraised by Klaus’s arms, “or were you embarrassed by something else, Nicky?” Klaus looks away. “Nicky, but you should, after all, be familiar with this physiology,” Elijah teases, and Klaus releases him – only in order to be kissed. Elijah doesn’t rush to undress or touch at him, Elijah just slightly bites at his lips, pulls him closer.

“It’s going be a nightmare to undress you, won’t it, Nicky?”

Giving in, Klaus pulls his own shirt over his head, and Elijah presses him close by the waist, forcing Klaus to arch his back, then kisses his neck, his chest, doing everything unhurriedly and very, very sweetly.

“Don’t be embarrassed.”

“You just shut up already,” Klaus says. “Why, shit, ah, ah, ah, Elijah, Christ, more.” The other man leaves mark after mark on his shoulders, and Klaus thinks that he’s going to die at each new touch. They give him such a burning pleasure that he wants to moan aloud, wants to finally abandon his reason and say something indecent, something that will make Elijah lose control and go mad. Why is Klaus the only cheap whore, why does he need to keep quiet and control how his back arches so that he doesn’t go too far, so that Elijah doesn’t decide that…

There’s a strong bite at his shoulder:

“Nicky, will you stop thinking or not? Why aren’t you with me?”

“Why are you so chatty?” Klaus asks uneasily. “I never…”

“You never thought that I’d talk in bed? And does that mean that you thought about me in bed a lot?”

Klaus moans in disappointment and looks away again. His brother is defeating him on all fronts.

“Nicky, it’s only going to get better from here. Tell me, why are you embarrassed?” Elijah asks gently.

“Well,” Klaus says. “If I start to moan, like a fucking whore, you’ll… you…”

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Elijah wipes the sweat from his forehead. “I won’t stop loving you no matter what, so, for God’s sake, moan, or I’ll think that…”

Klaus takes advantage of the moment and seizes the initiative. He turns them both, so that he ends up on top of Elijah, amazed at the change in his usually cold and distant brother. He bends forward, bites lightly at Elijah’s neck, since he can always give Elijah blood now, but doesn’t injure him. He kisses Elijah’s collarbones, feels his brother fidgeting beneath him, whispering something – the words turn into an incomprehensible rumble – hips slamming up against Klaus.

“Physiology, you said?” He raises his eyebrows and stares at Elijah, not allowing him to rise, holding him down horizontal.

Elijah moans, strained, now himself feeling the mockery without any anger behind it.

“Physiology,” Klaus smiles, again catching at the skin of his brother’s neck and reaching for Elijah’s chest, first with his fingers, then his palms, shamelessly sliding under the shirt.

The skin on his healed cuts is new, sensitive, not yet hardened, so just the smallest vertical movement of his hand sets him trembling like an electric shock – it’s as though his receptors have gone crazy and want to overload his whole brain. He undoes the buttons on Elijah’s shirt, and tears it off, kisses his shoulders again, still not sure what to do next, then seizes his brother with his fangs anyway and _drinks, _pulls him closer and laughs, expecting a kick in the stomach, but Elijah just bites into his neck, and blood mixes with blood.

* * *

“Elijah… Hey, Elijah,” Klaus drawls.

Elijah turns, unhurriedly fastening his belt.

Klaus once again feels himself grow cold inside. 

“That’s it?”

Elijah looks at the ceiling as though it committed some grave offense against him – and pulls off his shirt, goes to the bed where they’ve spent the last hour and a half, and sits down near Klaus’s blanketed feet.

“I wanted to ask Alex where we should look for Lockwood. But you thought, of course, that…”

“Well, yes,” Klaus interrupts, focused, freeing his hands from the blanket and narrowing his eyes. “And you didn’t want to sleep with me?”

“Nicky,” Elijah starts, but Klaus is already tugging the belt to him, pulling with such force that even the straps go flying off to hell.

“You asked for it yourself,” Elijah asserts, and pulls the blanket off his brother, presses him to the bed, and kisses him, sweet, torturous, and long.

“We’ll find Lockwood,” Klaus says, trying to maintain the remains of his self-control. “We’ll definitely find him, but, please, how about not today. And not… Ahhhh, Elijah, why do you _know _all this! Not tomorrow.”

“And not the day after that either, you convinced me,” Elijah whispers in his ear. “You’re wrong, _my _Nicky, I know a lot more than that.”

He leaves another mark on Klaus’s white skin. Now all of Klaus is a map of how Elijah loves him, and Elijah himself is no better; judging by his moans, gazes and even his _shouts, _everything is just how it should be, and Klaus really likes it. And Elijah – _fu–uu–uck, Klaus drawls out slowly – _really does know a lot more than he thought.


End file.
